Re: Random #'s via Sound Cards

[rustman@netcom.com (Rusty H. Hodge)]

At  9:03 PM 4/29/94 -0700, Phil Karn wrote:
>The easiest way to get true random numbers on a PC nowadays is
>with a sound board, preferably 16 bit. Just MD-5 hash some gibberish
>speech and/or background noise.

Great idea.  Hell, you don't even really need random gibbirish; most sound
cards have such poor analog audio front ends, you could just turn up the
gain and look at the LSBs.  I've mostly used the mid-level Mac products
from Digidesign, and even they have analog noise that is easily detectable
in the lower bits.

And for MacPGP- most Macs now have a sound-in; you could either do the
noise trick again (won't work as well in 8-bit, probably), or just base it
on the backgroud sounds.

Rusty H. Hodge, Hodge Productions    <rustman@netcom.com> (714) 532-6800
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